Hybrid format: in-person and virtual presentations welcome

This panel explores the figure of the film bro as cultural persona, aesthetic project, and unintentional performance artist—devoted disciple of “real cinema” and prophet of the male-authored canon. From Pulp Fiction to Taxi Driver, Fight Club to Drive, these films circulate not just as texts but as identity tokens, curated to signal depth, danger, or distinction. The film bro doesn’t just watch movies—he builds mythologies, performs allegiance, and weaponizes taste.

We invite papers that interrogate cinephilia as a performance of cultural capital, often entangled with masculinity, class anxiety, ironic posturing, and an unyielding allegiance to the auteur. In a media landscape shaped by Letterboxd reviews, YouTube video essays, and TikTok cringe edits, how do cult film preferences function as a mode of self-branding or digital sincerity masquerading as edginess? What does it mean to love Fight Club too much, and why has that affection become a meme?

Submissions may draw from Bourdieu, Sianne Ngai, meme studies, masculinity studies, cultural performance, or platform studies to examine how taste becomes ideology—an ironic pose, a sincere identity, or both.

Possible paper topics include (but are not limited to):

• The film bro as gendered aesthetic subject

• Cringe and cultural capital in Letterboxd discourse

• Cult film taste as a mode of identity self-stylization

• Auteur worship, edgelord cinema, and sincerity as affect

• The meme-ification of bad taste or over-identification

• The class politics of cinematic gatekeeping and fandom

• Red flags, irony, and the performance of liking “problematic” movies

• Algorithmic taste and the aesthetics of seeming smart online

We’re especially interested in interdisciplinary approaches that mix cultural theory, visual studies, film philosophy, internet studies, and humor as critique.

Proposals of 300–500 words and a short bio should be submitted through the NeMLA portal by September 30, 2025:
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21649
Questions? Contact chair Mara Mbele at marambele.docx@gmail.com